The Broadsheet: January 27th

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Theresa May meets with Donald Trump today, Kellyanne Conway says she wants to spend less time on TV, and Madeleine Albright is ready to put her money where her mouth is to defend American Muslims. Have a relaxing weekend.

EVERYONE’S TALKING

• Opposites attract? British PM Theresa May will meet with President Donald Trump today, becoming the first world leader to do so. She is largely expected to stick to a script, emphasizing the need for the two countries to uphold “freedom, liberty, and the rights of man.” However, Fortune‘s Claire Zillman points out that there are a few issues that might inject some awkwardness into May’s charm offensive—including free trade, torture, food policy, and, yes, Trump’s alleged treatment of women.

Earlier this week, May gave a murky answer when asked if she would confront Trump about his track record with the opposite sex: “Whenever there is something that I find unacceptable I won’t be afraid to say that to Donald Trump,” she said. On Wednesday, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour party pushed May further, asking her to “congratulate the 100,000 people who marched in Britain…and to express their concerns about his misogyny.”

Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, reportedly urged May to befriend Trump, hoping that she and other center-right leaders could act as something of a moderating force for the new commander-in-chief.

For her part, May seems to be signaling that she and Trump can have serious disagreements and still maintain the “special relationship” between their two nations. When asked about her differences with the American president, she quipped: “Sometimes opposites attract.”

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• Lights, camera, Kellyanne. In this wide-ranging interview, Kellyanne Conway says she is trying to scale back the amount of time she spends in the media so that she can spend more time advising the president on policy.
The Hollywood Reporter

• The other women’s march. But that’s not to say Conway is shying away from public appearances quite yet. Along with Vice President Mike Pence, she will speak at today’s 44th annual March for Life, an anti-abortion demonstration happening in Washington, D.C. Given the size of last weekend’s (largely pro-choice) Women’s March, organizers are hoping to see record crowds.
New York Times

• Sandberg speaks up. Sheryl Sandberg weighed in on President Trump’s reinstatement of a policy banning U.S. foreign aid to overseas health providers who offer abortion counseling or advocate for a woman’s right to have an abortion. The policy could have “terrible consequences for women and families around the world,” the Facebook COO wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. “Women’s rights are human rights—and there is no more basic right than health care. Women around the world deserve our support.”
Fortune

• Enter Entrypoint. Fortune‘s Valentina Zarya has the exclusive on Entrypoint, a female-led, New York-based startup trying to democratize the virtual reality industry. The founders aim to simplify the process by which creators make and share interactive content. The company closed a $2 million seed round, led by Samsung NEXT (the VC arm of the South Korean giant) and Two Sigma Ventures (a division of the investment manager of the same name).
Fortune

• Pointing fingers at Puzder. Fast food worker advocacy group Fight for $15 announced that its workers have filed 33 complaints this month against Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s franchisees, two restaurant chains operated by CKE Restaurants, where Trump labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder is CEO. In a conference call arranged by the group, ex-Hardee’s employee Caetana Cardona described fending off unwanted advances from a manager at the chain while she was pregnant.
Fortune

• On protests and parenting. On this week’s Broad Strokes, Val and I talked about what comes next for the Women’s March protesters, why The New York Times is so tickled by parenting dads, and why single women dial back their ambitions around men.
Fortune

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Democrat meets dictator. Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced that she had met with Bashar al-Assad during a trip to Syria and dismissed his entire opposition as “terrorists.” Party leaders have not commented on the Hawaii lawmaker’s decision to meet with the dictator.
The Guardian

• She ran out of fuel. Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt, the compliance chief brought in to help VW recover from its emissions scandal, is leaving the carmaker’s board at the end of this month following differences of opinion over her role.
Fortune

• Different decade, same story. The staffing of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was way ahead of its time: it had a 25% female writers’ room when there were almost no women working in TV. Unfortunately, not all that much has changed since the 70s in this regard. According to a recent study, women accounted for about 28.9% of screenwriters in 2014.
Fortune

• Oscars get political. Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti—a star of the foreign-language Academy Award-nominated film The Salesman—says she will boycott the Oscars ceremony to protest President Trump’s announcement that he will issue a temporary ban on visas to citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
New York Times

QUOTE

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, after the White House announced that it will halt the U.S. refugee program and temporarily stop issuing visas to people from several majority-Muslim countries.